Week in Ethereum News -The Latest Ethereum News and Upcoming Events This Week
Eth News and Links
Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade (meta {1706492738438720})
Final public testnets upgrade to Dencun Jan 30 (Sepolia) & Feb 7 (Holešky)
Lightweight beaconcha.in explorers: mainnet, Holešky & Sepolia
L2s testing blobs:
RollCall (L2 standards) EIP4844 readiness call: L2s testing on Goerli or waiting for Sepolia & improving communications with core devs
OP & Base devnets posting batches via blobs on Goerli testnet
Starknet sent state diff blob on Goerli testnet
Dencun interop testing call video: high memory usage after blob spamming, max churn limit (EIP7514) will be tested on Goerli and first blobs expire on Goerli Feb 5
EF DevOps Attacknet: chaos testing tooling, plan to open source after Dencun
Pectra (Prague + Electra) upgrade (meta {1706492738901306})
Latest all core devs – consensus (ACDC) call video. Notes from Christine Kim:
Electra upgrade scope (small cross layer fork targeting late 2024):
Client team priorities: Lighthouse, Lodestar & Prysm
Electra EIPs: EIP6110 (validator deposits onchain), EIP7002 (EL triggerable exits) & EIP7549 (move committee index outside attestation)
Not in Electra: EIP6914 (reuse validator indices)
Discussions ongoing: EIP7251 (increase max effective balance), EIP7547 (inclusion lists), EIP7594 (PeerDAS) & SSZification EIPs
Client releases for Sepolia & Holešky testnets Dencun upgrade
Consensus layer:
Lighthouse v4.6.0
Lodestar v1.15.0-rc.0
Nimbus v24.1.2
Prysm v4.2.1-rc.2
Teku v24.1.1
ution layer:
Besu v24.1.1
Erigon v2.57.1
Geth v1.13.11
Nethermind v1.25.3
Reth v0.1.0-alpha.16
Centralization watch: threatening the value of your ETH
🚨 Lido at 31.84% is far too close to 33.3% threshold
Client diversity (via clientdiversity.org):
ution layer: Geth 78% supermajority, could cause a chain split & lose your staked ETH
Allnodes & P2P migrated to Besu
Lido & Kiln reducing Geth usage
Coinbase & Kraken “taking a look” at client diversity
Consensus layer: Prysm 39%, any client bug over 33.3% could mean loss of finality
Better geographic diversity is optimal, particularly outside of North America & Europe
Layer 1
Nethermind mainnet consensus issue on Jan 21, v1.23-1.25 were affected, patched
Data viz on whether we can increase the gas limit
Validator in-protocol consolidation in EIP7251 (increase max effective balance), to allow large stakers to consolidate without having to fully exit validators & redeploy
Research
Potential changes to staking rewards & penalties to reduce issuance moderately at high staking levels
For stakers
Rated list of solo stakers in CSV format (first 500k indices)
Layer 2
RARI L3 (Arbitrum Orbit) live, with NFT royalty enforcement
Public Goods Network, Aevo & Lyra (OP Stack) changed to Optimiums (sidechain DA)
EIPs/Standards
ERCs (application layer):
ERC7601: Dapp permission framework
ERC7602: Ethereum mixing transaction supervision
ERC7603: Context-dependent multi-asset tokens (ERC1155 extension)
Stuff for developers
Solidity v0.8.24:
Cancun support (via EVM version flag): tstore & tload transient storage (EIP1153), blobhash & blobbasefee (EIP4844) and mcopy (EIP5656)
Apple silicon support
Mutexer: Solidity mutexes (contract, function & custom level), using Cancun transient storage (EIP1153)
Forge proposal simulator: framework to create proposals (multisig, timelock & Governor Bravo) and deployment s/tests
Ape (Python contract framework) custom network support
CTFs:
SmartSecRiddles: 7 challenges based on vulnerabilities with writeups
Audit wizard find the bug challenge
Security
Concentric $1.7M exploit on Arbitrum using social engineering to compromise deployer
Eco
Academic paper on transparency & concentration in Ethereum governance
Suggest a city for a future Devcon or Devconnect
Job Listings
Status is hiring: Technical Chief Operating Officer - Apply here
Nethermind: Distributed Engineer, Lead Engineer, Protocol Researcher
ZK circuits engineer sought by EF Privacy & Scaling Explorations team
EF seek an utive Assistant to support senior decision makers
Onchain stats
Gas fees (via ultrasound.money): 6.3 to 82.4 gwei, with 17.6 gwei average
Zero net issuance currently at 22.0 gwei
4k ETH net issuance this week
ETHUSD: $2,186 - $2,491, currently $2,267
ETHBTC: currently 0.054 (Flippening at ~0.16)
Notable at app layer
Synthetix Perps v3 live on Base (Andromeda)
UMA Oval live on mainnet, protocols can capture oracle extractable value
0x Tx Relay API live on mainnet, gasless swaps & approvals
Ethereum Attestation Service MetaMask Snap decodes EAS attestation data for signing
Regulation/business/tokens
SEC Twitter account compromised in January SIM swap had 2FA disabled since July 2023
General
Support Roman Storm & Alex Pertsev legal defense via Juicebox fundraiser
USDT on Tron is majority of consumer stablecoin transactions & how Ethereum can compete
Field Merkle Tree: commit multiple STARKs using binary Merkle Tree
Apple fixed WebKit confusion zero day, update your devices
Upcoming Dates of Note
(new/changes in bold)
Jan 30 – Sepolia testnet Dencun upgrade epoch 132608 (assuming no issues)
Feb 2-4 – ETH Cinco de Mayo hackathon (Cholula, Puebla)
Feb 3 – Ethereum Lima Day
Feb 7 – Holešky testnet Dencun upgrade epoch 29696 (assuming no issues)
Feb 23-Mar 3 – ETHDenver BUIDLWeek & hackathon
Mar 13-14 – ETHLatam (San Pedro Sula, Honduras)
Mar 15-17 – Pragma & ETHGlobal LondonMar 19-21 – ETH Canal (Panama City, Panamá)
Mar 21-24 – ETHTaipei conference & hackathon
Mar 27-30 – ETH Bucharest hackathon & conference
Mar 29-31 – ETH Seoul
Apr 5-26 – ETHGlobal Scaling Ethereum (virtual)
Apr 5-7 – EthereumZuri.ch conference & hackathon
Apr 12-14 – ETHDam (Amsterdam) conference & hackathon
May 3-5 – Pragma & ETHGlobal Sydney
May 21-23 – DappCon (Berlin)
May 24-26 – ETHBerlin
May 31-Jun 2 – ETHDublin hackathon & conference
May 31-Jun 2 – ETHPrague conference & hackathon
Jun 3-5 – ETH Belgrade conference
Jul 8-11 – EthCC (Brussels)
Jul 11-14 – Pragma & ETHGlobal Brussels
Jul 26-30 – EDCON Tokyo conference
Aug 23-Sep 13 – ETHGlobal ETHOnline (virtual)
Sep 20-22 – ETHGlobal Singapore
Oct 18-20 – how to buy Aleph Zero & ETHGlobal San Francisco
Nov 12-15 – Devcon 7 - Southeast Asia (Bangkok)
Nov 15-17 – ETHGlobal Bangkok hackathon
